20 Random Facts About Draco Phineas Malfoy
by Thanfiction
Summary: He will survive. Part of the Daydverse 20 Random Facts Series.


**1. He was born of desperation.**  
It had been almost ten years of useless attempts since Narcissa had been cursed in a dispute with her sisters, and she knew Lucius had given up hope of an heir. It hung over the marriage like an icy condemnation, and she had even considered faking a pregnancy and buying a child from some foolish teenager, if it weren't for the bloody Malfoy men all looking like such damned replicas of one another. In the end, her research took her to the hut of one of the last true practitioners of the old Pictish witchcraft. It was dark magic, raw magic, muttered and burned, and the pregnancy had made her so sick it had nearly killed her. She named him Draco, not after the constellation as had been the tradition of her family, but after the newborn beast whose blood she'd bought him with on a silver knife, as a reminder that if it's worth the price, the price is never small.

**2. He always thought of Crabbe and Goyle rather like pets.**  
Their fathers had been his father's bodyguards since Lucius had first been a rising young politician with as many enemies as Galleons, and of course their sons would be his. They were a bit older than Draco - though the appropriate amendments had been made to certain papers to ensure they would go to school together - but they never felt like older playmates, much less mentors. They were useful, certainly, they made him feel safe, and it was wicked fun to see what they could pick up or watch them try to figure out a candy puzzle box, but that was about it. They were sort of like Wade Rosier's mastiffs, if they could talk and had thumbs.

**3. He is a sculptor.**  
He's enjoyed playing with clay since he was a toddler, and when she noticed him making surprisingly accurate reproductions of some of the manor's sculptures, Narcissa arranged proper lessons for him by the time he was five. He has done a few marbles because it's kind of de rigueur, but his favorite media are glass and ceramic, and they had him a proper kiln and workshop built for his fourteenth birthday. His mother insisted on keeping her favorite piece of his, a life-sized white peacock of milk glass with a favrile tail, charmed to display its full, glorious fan whenever the sunlight hit it just so.

**4. He was supposed to make friends with Harry.**  
Father said Harry was important. Father said that Dumbledore would try to make a Muggle-lover out of him. Father said that Harry wouldn't have any friends at first, and he needed to make sure that he made the _right _friends_early _and wanted to be sorted into Slytherin. Father said it was very, very important for Harry to want to be sorted into Slytherin. Father said if he was nice to Harry, it should be easy, and all he had to do was make the first move. Things did not particularly go as father said. He got a ten page letter that was the sternest lecture of his eleven years about that.

**5. He hates being embarrassed more than anything.**  
It was half the problem with the whole Harry disaster, really. His mother once said that he'd stand in the rain until he drowned rather than admit he should have stayed inside, and it was alarmingly accurate. He _hated _being wrong and would do almost anything to not have to admit it, but it wasn't that he thought he was always right, it was that being wrong was embarrassing. Embarrassment was the _worst_. When he had nightmares, even as an adult, even after he'd seen things that nightmares had nightmares about, the worst ones were always about humiliation. The _very _worst was being laughed at by people lesser than you. This was, in a nutshell, why he spent six years of his youth thinking up vile things to call ginger Blood-Traitors and frizzy-haired Mudbloods.

**6. He didn't actually know much about what his father did when he was young.**  
His mother was determined to let him have a childhood, and while he knew that his father was in the Ministry (very important five days a week), in Good Society, (very important that you go out for late at night in fine robes) made Investments and had Business Ventures (exceedingly important and where the money came from) and had been involved in the war (very important and heroic), he was blissfully ignorant of the details beyond that. That would be for after school, when he was grown and ready to be prepared for his own eventual turn at that legacy. It gave the whole matter something of the air of a shining castle atop a distant hill in a fairy tale, and he was both excited and a little afraid to wonder what was inside.

**7. He hates carbonated drinks and foods that ooze. **  
Textures of food and drink matter to him sometimes as much if not more than the flavor. He can't stand the way fizzy drinks itch and burn in your mouth and feel too big for how much you actually drank in your stomach, or things with tiny seeds or hulls that you find in your teeth for hours. The only thing worse is foods that appear to be performing a biological function…sweating or bleeding or seeping. He nearly gagged at his first formal dinner when he cut in with his fork and discovered that the sponge cake had a surprise liquid raspberry filling.

**8. His father never hit him until he was 15.**  
Some people can point to a single instant in their life where everything changed. For him, it was six minutes past eight, 11 January, 1996. Professor Snape took him to Hogsmeade because his parents had asked urgently to meet with him. His mother looked twice her age, wasn't wearing makeup, and had obviously been given a sedative. His father kept rubbing his arm and ordered Snape to leave them. There'd been an escape. His aunt was at liberty and would soon be rejoining the Death Eaters. His mother made a dying sound in her throat. Draco had shrugged and laughed in the innocence of a fool. "So bloody what? You're already his top. Tell the Dark Lord she can't come back." There was no warning, just the sting of leather with a ring beneath backhand across the mouth so hard it knocked him to the floor, and he looked up at a stranger who reached down and yanked him to his feet and out of childhood. "Get up. No. No crying. You will listen, and you will obey. You are my son, and this family is going to survive."

**9. He had a cat for a little while.**  
After the disaster at the Ministry, the Dark Lord appointed Aunt Bellatrix to "talk to her family" and "determine their loyalties." It hadn't seemed that bad at first. Not bad at all, really. She even bought him a kitten, though his mother had never liked cats, said they climbed everywhere. It was almost three months before he learned why his mother had never liked him using the word "games." It was also how he discovered exactly how powerful the Imperius curse was, why it was Unforgivable, and just how extraordinarily good Aunt Bellatrix was at it. After she was dead, he sculpted a beautiful ceramic tabby that still sits in Bastet's favorite place in the second floor library window. It's as close as he can get to an apology.

**10. The Dark Mark hurts.**  
His mother had tried to advise him to focus on how it would save them all, that it was said that if you wanted it with your whole heart, it would feel like bliss when they branded it. It didn't. It hurt so much he saw fireworks behind his eyes, and there was nothing so wrong as the smell of your own skin burning. He told himself it was temporary, it would heal, and in some ways it was true. The wound did, turning as intended to a deep scar, but it kept burning, sometimes barely an ache, sometimes as hot and sharp as fresh when the Dark Lord was angry or calling them. Even after he died, it refused to silence completely, remaining sore and sensitive as a fresh sunburn. He could swear that being around Potter had always made it worse, but that was probably in his head.

**11. He picks at himself under stress.**  
It isn't even on purpose, and he'd always been a little that way. Couldn't count the times his mother told him to get his nails out of his mouth or to stop fussing at his cuticles with a quill when he was bored with a tutor. When things got harder, it got darker and…weird. The usual quick swipe of the washcloth turning to fifteen minutes and blood running down his stomach from where he'd scraped every little trace of lint from his bellybutton (and most of the skin). Tracks of his own nails down his arms and thighs and sides, not at once, but built up over hours and days of steady scratching. Plucking at almost invisible silver strands until his arms were bare and smooth. Tugging at his hair, wrapping and weaving and pulling until it came away in threads and clumps. When he was awaiting trial after Voldemort's fall, he pulled his eyebrows and eyelashes out. His lawyer grew them back. Said it looked creepy.

**12. He got a crash course in wizarding politics.**  
The entire time their family was locked up together, Lucius devoted every waking moment to cramming what should have been at least a decade's apprenticeship into a few months. He had spent over 30 years working his fingers into every pie in their society, and there were few greater masters of the Machiavellian arts, but he also knew that his life was at a madman's whim and his skills his son's only hope. They did survive, of course, and his father was able to teach him more over the years to follow - especially after Draco was in the Wizengamot properly - but those first lessons stuck with him like nothing else he was ever taught in his life, branded more deeply than any snake and skull.

**13. He tried to turn Harry in at Malfoy Manor. **  
There was absolutely no reason not to. Fool had already gotten himself caught, that was a cast spell. And whatever he'd done to his head would wear off one way or another, or they'd bring in a Healer or a Curse Breaker or whatever they needed to do. Ridiculous that they were even asking - he was with Granger and Weasley for Merlin's sake! - but it was a chance to curry favor. To be good, and being good was so very important. He tried, oh, he tried, but the name kept turning to bitter ash on his tongue. It was the Fidelius, he was sure of it, the stupid trick that damned Longbottom and his little freakish fanclub had pulled, but it didn't matter. He couldn't even make himself nod, and he begged with his eyes that his father would know that he didn't mean to let him down as he finally managed to force a vague maybe past his lips.

**14. He cheated on his girlfriend with her sister.**  
It wasn't that there was anything wrong with Daphne. She was pretty, she liked him, their parents were ecstatic at the match, and he liked spending time with her. But Tori had always been a black sheep, almost as bad as Aunt Anna, speaking out boldly against the Dark Lord as a madman. In 6th and parts of 7th year, that had also made her the only person he felt safe talking to, even if it meant sneaking off to the furthest corners of the dungeons to whisper the dark truth of what was happening at home. And sometimes, especially early on before the dark things ate the good things, when the words and the tears are already so intimate and you're already alone….

**15. He was nearly killed after the battle was over.**  
He doesn't remember it. He had been exhausted in every way a person could be - physically, emotionally, mentally, magically - and even being arrested along with the other surviving Death Eaters had hardly seemed real, much less important. He just lay down on the floor where they were being held and fell asleep. He never heard Norma Hooper's nervous breakdown or saw her get away from the Healers and come running towards them. He didn't wake up until his mother screamed, and then there was a crack and more screaming and Tori was on top of him, the side of her face in shreds and her hair on fire. He didn't know she'd been holding him in his sleep, didn't realize the curse had been coming until she'd taken it for him, but he didn't even look to see who had cast it. He was too busy pulling his body around hers in turn, shouting for a fucking Medic even though his mother abhorred such language, trying to pull off a shirt in fucking handcuffs to press it to her head and begging her to stay with him, keep her eyes open, stay now, stay for the rest of her life, don't die on me, marry me.

**16. He paid his fines with Muggle gold.**  
It was his mother's idea and it was brilliant. Father had handled his investments and accounts well, understanding every loophole and writing a few more into law as needed. The Ministry had no idea how much money they actually had or where, but the figures named for restitution were obviously intended to ruin them, and truly should have. Except damned if they were going to be broken by this when they'd already survived so much. There were so many limits on their magic while on probation, but even the simple little spells meant for everyday living tasks made it surprisingly easy to make a few forays to jewelry stores and wholesalers, to copying an antique here and pick over a country estate there. A little transfiguration, some old fashioned melting down, and the family coffers didn't drop a Knut.

**17. He started getting death threats when Scorpius was only a week old. **  
He'd known about the Assurance, obviously. He'd been getting owls and Howlers from them and seeing their letters in the paper and their pamphlets stuffed in his mailbox since the day he was acquitted. They'd always blathered about ending his line and all that, but he'd never paid much attention. Then there had been a bassinet on the front porch six days after Scorpius was born containing a blue baby blanket…wrapped around the AKed body of a pure white kitten with a skull and snake scorched in its fur. He checked every room of the house, every door, every window, and all the security spells and warding at least three times every night before bed.

**18. He plans epic romantic trysts.**  
He had a lot of difficulty with sex in the beginning. Aunt Bella had made him watch as she sexually tortured prisoners, and kept threatening to make him do it as well - or to make him rape his mother - and at first, even the sight of an exposed breast could send her laugh shivering through his memory. So he built a wall of roses between them, spending weeks of planning and wild sums of money on lush suites in Paris, moonlight picnics at the Taj Mahal, on Venice and Versailles, vintage champagne, velvet and lace, roses by the dozens and candles by the hundreds. He creates a cocoon of love and poetry, beauty and romance, locks out the screams and the pleas and the crack of bone and lets himself sink into the peace of her lips.

**19. He and Justin have an odd sort of friendship.**  
It started, of all things, over the glass. It was obligatory to make a visit to the newly-elected member of the Wizengamot, and the lovely piece of copperfoil in the charmed window had caught his eye and started a surreal conversation about blown and molded, cut and pressed, vintage and modern. Beyond that, too, there was duty and heritage, fathers lost younger than expected and roles inherited earlier and more potently than feared, the precarious position of standing atop a social structure that was shuddering on the edge of collapse. They don't like each other. They don't agree with each other. They're on opposite sides of almost everything. But there's something to be said for knowing what it MEANS to have a Name.

**20. He made a promise to his father.**  
It wasn't the fever that killed him. The Healers said by all rights, he should have survived it. But Draco knew he'd really died at his trial, died when they snapped his wand and stripped him of every trace of power and position. He'd have rather been executed than so systemically shamed, and Draco always believed they'd known that. He'd been like a ghost for the next seven years, haunting the Manor more than living in it, and a part of him believed he'd just been waiting for Scorpius to be born before he gave up and let go. He asked to see the baby in his final hours, then sent them away and kept only his own son. They sat in silence for a long time, then the thin, burning fingers had wrapped his hand and squeezed harder than he thought they still could, the grey eyes that mirrored his own sharp for one last demand that echoed back to a slap. "You are my son. Make sure this family survives."


End file.
